RE in Snowflakes Nursery

In Snowflakes we learn about and learn from the Catholic Faith.

Through simple activities and group circle times we teach the following:

• to know that God loves and cares for each of us and how to reflect on this
• to hear about and to respond to the things God created for us
• to know that God has asked us to care for the world and to think of ways in which we can help to do it
• to know that God made each one of us different and special and to reflect on this.

The class have been shown how to say prayers in the morning before the day starts and in the afternoon before going home. We have also shown them how we can sit as a group around the prayer table, putting our hands together and making the sign of the cross.

June - July 2022

After learning about Baptism during our Pentecost celebrations, we have been talking about being part of God's family, being part of the Church. Many people make up the family of God, the Church.

We have learnt about some of the things that happen at Mass and we have role played being in a Church. We took turns to be the priest and the congregation. This role play was very special and we were careful with the artefacts. We said our prayers and sang some hymns. All the children were very respectful.

Week beginning 6.6.22 Pentecost Week

This week we spent the whole week learning about and celebrating the feast of Pentecost. We heard about how Jesus' friends were frightened after He had gone back to His father. He had said He would send the Holy Spirit to look after them, but they did not know what that meant. Who was the Holy Spirit? What did he look like? How would they know when he came?

They were gathered together in a locked house when suddenly there was a great wind. All the doors and windows blew open! The friends were terrified. Suddenly they saw a small tongue of fire hanging over each of their heads. They knew then that these were signs from Jesus that the Holy Spirit had come. They felt brave and strong. They went out into the street and found that they could now speak many languages. They were able to tell all the people about Jesus in their own language.

The signs of the Holy Spirit are wind, fire, water and a dove. We did lots of activities based on these elements of the Holy Spirit.

Wind - we made and waved streamers in the wind.

Fire - we painted fire pictures, coloured flames and made flame headbands.

Water - we learnt how the Holy Spirit comes to us in Baptism. We role played baptising a baby.

Dove - we made handprint white doves.

20.5.22

The Ascension

Jesus told His friends that He had to go back to His Father in Heaven. They were upset and afraid that He was going to leave them again. He said that He would send the Holy Spirit to look after them to keep them strong. Jesus walked with them to a hillside. As they watched, He began to go up into the sky, until He was completely hidden by the clouds. His friends were very confused and amazed. Two angels appeared near them and said that Jesus would return again.

We made Jesus in the clouds, just like He was when ascended to His Father in Heaven.

13.5.22

When Jesus appeared to His friends, Thomas was not present. When he returned, the other disciples told him that Jesus had come to see them. Thomas did not believe them . He said "I will not believe until I see and touch the holes in His hands." Jesus came back another time when Thomas was there. Thomas touched Jesus' hands and said "I believe."

We coloured in Jesus' hands and painted a red heart in the middle to remind us that Jesus had died for us and that He was nailed to the cross, leaving holes in His hands and His feet.

19.4.22 - 6.5.22

We have been learning about the Resurrection of Jesus and how His friends felt when it happened. At first they were shocked when they realised he was not in the tomb anymore. His friend Mary Magdalene went to the tomb to lay flowers. Jesus was not there, but He was behind her and spoke to her. She ran to tell His friends that He was alive! They were not sure if this was true, but later, Jesus appeared to them in a house where they were. After they saw Him, they were so happy!

We are also happy about the Resurrection of Jesus. This is the good news! We drew happy faces to show how Jesus makes us feel. We also made coloured streamers so that we could wave them to show our happiness!

We acted out the story of when Jesus appeared to His friends. They knew it was Him, because He showed them the holes in His hands.

28.03.22

This week we based our activities around Easter and what it means to us as a Catholic school.

In Forest School the children made crosses. They had to find one long and one short thin twig which was then tied together with string. We used the crosses to help us in our RE lesson as Mrs Badger read the Easter story and we saw a picture of Jesus carrying the cross on his back.

Carrying on from last week we then sat together to share some hot cross buns together and we looked at how the cross can clearly be seen on the top.

We also made Easter cards for our families and each child took home a small box of Easter eggs.

25.03.22

This week we learnt how to share. We listened to the story of how Jesus fed the 5000 with just 5 loaves of bread and two fishes.

Mrs Badger shared her loaf of bread with all her friends in the class and we all had some together.

Mrs Markowicz made us all a lovely bowl full of fruit and vegetables which we shared together for our snack time sitting on the carpet in a circle. Each child passed the bowl round taking one piece of fruit and saying thank you.

It was really good to be able to share our food with each other and we thought about how Jesus managed to share the food he had with so many people and still have some left over. We said a prayer together to thank God for our food.

25.2.22

This week we learnt about how to be kind and to forgive each other. We listened to a story that Jesus told about The Unforgiving Debtor. We talked about treating others how we would like to be treated ourselves.

We looked at pictures of children who were sad and discussed what we thought had happened to make them sad. Then we looked at another picture of the child happy again and talked about what their friends did to make them happy.

Mrs Gajjar used puppets to act out a story of someone being sad and their friend trying to make them happy again. Then we could choose to use puppets to tell a story ourselves.

11.2.22

This week was Feeling Good Week! We talked about our feelings and how we can make others feel happy and sad. We took photographs of ourselves with a happy face and a sad face. We stuck them back to back on a lolly stick so that we could change our expression! It was funny to see our different expressions.

We thought of ways we could make people happy if they were feeling sad. 

20.01.22

This week in RE we found out about how Jesus cured people who were ill.

We sat together and shared our experiences of being unwell and visiting the Doctor or going to Hospital. The children were very keen to talk about what happens when you don't feel well.

We then looked at the different uniforms that Doctors, Nurses and Vets wear and the equipment they use. There were a lot of very long words to learn as we looked at Stethoscopes, Syringes, Thermometers and we explained how to take temperatures and give injections.

We then read the story of how Jesus helped a person who was ill and how he healed him.

The children were then able to say what they thought about the story. One thought that it was 'a miracle' and another said' we need to look after each other'. One of the class said that 'even if you think you can't do something if you try really hard you might be able to do it'. He was trying to explain that when Jesus told the sick man to walk, and the man said that he couldn't because he was too ill, if the man tried to walk then maybe he would be able to do it and he would feel better.

14.1.22

Today we learnt about the very first miracle that Jesus performed. This happened when he was at a wedding in the town of Cana with his mother, Mary.

When the hosts at the wedding ran out of wine, Mary told the servers to do whatever Jesus told them to do do. Jesus told them to fill the wine pots with water. The servers were very confused, but did as He said.

When they poured what was in the pots into peoples' glasses, the water had turned into wine. Everybody was amazed and very grateful to Jesus.

We role played the story in class and then continued the role play in the outside area as lots of us wanted to "change" the water into wine!

10.12.21

We heard the story of The Nativity. We learnt that the Angel went to tell the shepherds to go and visit Jesus. The 3 Kings saw a bright star in the East and they followed it to find the Baby Jesus. We found out what a stable is and what a manger is used for. 

Afterwards we used our Nativity figures to retell the story.

25.11.21

Today we learnt about The Holy Family. We heard about how Mary said she would be the mother of Jesus and how she and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem. Jesus was born in a stable and they became The Holy Family. We also learnt that special people in the Bible are pictured with halos around their heads, to show their holiness.

We made The Holy Family from lolly sticks and material to put onto our Christmas cards.

19.11.21

Today we visited the Prayer Garden. We saw a big statue of Jesus and we said our Morning Prayer when we were there. We are going to make our own small Prayer Area in the Early Years playground.

Later we practised joining our hands and saying our prayers.

11.11.21

We are thinking about COP26 this week and about how we can better look after our world.

When we were at Forest School, a robin flew down and was sitting close to us, preeening itself. This litle robin used to be fed by one of our pupils in school.

Later that day, two robins flew into Mrs Browne's class after school when it was dark outside. The lights were on in the class and the door was open. We talked about this in class and wondered whether the robin and his friend were hungry and had flown into the school looking for food and for the boy who used to feed them.

We decided that we need to look after our robins, as they are God's creatures and this can be part of our job of looking after our world.

We made bird feeders by squashing lard into pine cones and then sticking raisins into the lard. We took the bird feeders up to Forest School and hung them in the trees for our robins and any other birds who are hungry.

5.11.21

This week we celebrated Diwali, the Festival of Lights. It is Hindu New Year. We learnt about how Hindu people make beautiful patterns in their houses and they light little lamps and fireworks to celebrate.  

Diwali means "rows of lighted lamps."

We made little clay lamps for our candles and decorated them. We also coloured in some Diwali lights and stuck a flame on them.

22.10.21

Today we heard the story about how Jesus' friends tried to stop the little children from bothering Him. Jesus said "Let the little children come to me."

We stuck pictures of ourselves close to Jesus.

15.10.21

Today we listened to the story of The Little Red Hen and talked about how none of her friends helped her. We thought about how it is good to help each other and that we can show God we love Him by helping each other. We discovered that Teddy needed help to put his clothes on and that he also needed someone to help him to get his breakfast. We spent a long time helping Teddy!

8.10.21

"I have a special box. I want you to look inside the box, but don't say anything. Then pass the box on to the person next to you."

We looked into the special box and the children were excited to see what was inside. When we had all had a turn, we talked about what we saw.

"I saw me!"  "It was a mirror!"  "I am smiling!" 

Why did we see ourselves in the special box? Because we are ALL special and so we are all in the special box.

1.10.21

This week  we compared ourselves to each other, looking carefully at skin colour, eye colour, hair type, height and so on. We learnt that we all look different on the outside, but that God loves us all the same. The children then used the iPad to take photos of each other, following prompts such as "Who has curly hair?", "Can you find someone with blue eyes?".

1st October 2021         

                                           Going Green for CAFOD

On Friday the children were encouraged to come to school wearing one item of green clothing as the school were taking part in Going Green for CAFOD         (the Catholic International development charity in England and Wales).

Shining a light on some of the causes of the climate emergency whilst doing our bit to guard God's creation and protect our common home.

Supporting Amazon communities, protecting the rainforest and people around the world dealing with climate crisis.

24.9.21

This term we have started our RE journey by talking about how we are all different and that God made all of us and loves all of us. We have talked about the people in our families and have learnt that we are all part of God's family.